Mortality and Music

Death, Decay and Contemporary Gothic in Popular Music is the first book to investigate preoccupation with 'the end' in popular music and youth culture. While western culture seems perennially fascinated by the notion of death and apocalypse in contemporary culture, little research has been carried out into the social and cultural implications of Goth subcultures within popular music, and the significance of these themes for the articulation of the sacred in the modern world. Although popular music plays a greater part in the everyday lives of more people than at any time in the past, it is only recently that important theoretical work is beginning to be produced in relation to religion and the sacred. Millenarian discourse and speculation about 'the end' became particularly prominent around the turn of the millennium, and the notion ofdeath - from personal extinction to the apocalyptic end of history - has ofcourse been a recurrent theme within art, literature, cinema and music - not leastpopular music. Drawing on religious studies, sociological analysis, and culturaltheory, this book is a confluence of Christopher Partridge's renowned work onpopular music, contemporary culture, and alternative spiritual and paranormaldiscourses. Employing theories of liminality, occulture, and transgression, heexplores discourses of terminus in popular music, focusing particularly ondeath, decay, and the grotesque. Exploring the transgressive discoursesrelating to death and decay in genres including punk, industrial, darkwave, goth, and extreme metal, and how these themes are directly related to areas ofspirituality and culture, Death, Decay and Contemporary Gothic in Popular Music will bean important contribution to both religion and popular culture, and popularmusic studies.